We have the keys!!!! It recorded today! We now have a house again! (Our old house funded/recorded last week, so technically we had a few days as renters.)

Work on the floors is progressing nicely. We had to decide between the future integrity of our new kitchen floor versus the current small dishwasher....the floor won. (The dishwasher fit so tightly that if it ever died, removing it would involve cutting the new wood floor.)

We're actually considering ripping out the lower cabinets and sink (keeping the upper cabinets, they seem solid and unwarped) and if so will install a (non-period) full-sized dishwasher. I don't know if the current tile-in sink could be resurfaced and reused, I need to research that. We were wanting to redo the countertop tile in white hexes with accent colors or similar and subway tile on the wall for a backsplash.

We're probably a little past half done moving stuff out of our old garage and into our new garage. I did two trips today at lunch and Dave and I did one when I got home (he'd already loaded the XTerra). Hopefully two trips tomorrow and we'll be pretty much done with what we were planning to move (saving the big cabinet and washer and dryer for the official movers). Luckily our garage was pretty well organized with the majority of our gear and stuff in Rubbermaid or similar containers (being anal has its rewards).

Dave's mom Rosemary arrives tomorrow to help us pack. We'll be able to start moving packed boxes into our old garage Thursday.

As noted before, we should be able to move stuff into the house proper on Sunday; anything we can fit in my Subaru or Dave's XTerra we'll be moving over ourselves. The movers will move the rest Monday morning.

I finished painting the turquoise table (3 coats!)....pic to follow.

Here's the flickr link to the new house -- 'before' pics.

Countdown

Dona (our realtor) and I are doing our final walkthrough on the 30th of October.

We're supposed to get the keys officially on Halloween.

Work on the floors by Wilson Flooring Company starts that morning (install wood in the kitchen/ kitchen nook to match the oak, sand, stain, finish the kitchen and the rest of the house). We'll start moving stuff to the garage that week as well. Travis from Wilson said we'll be able to move light things in on Sunday, so guess what we'll be doing that day!

We're planning on moving whatever will fit into Dave's XTerra or my Forester ourselves, and having the official moving company (Redondo Van and Storage) on the morning of the 6th for the big stuff (appliances, couch, etc). Our first night in our new place will be that night!

Today we did a quick go-through of our house, finding stuff that we didn't want or need any more. (Since we do this fairly regularly -- a must with a small house that we want to keep uncluttered -- we only had three small boxes of stuff, mostly clothing that we don't wear anymore.) One thing I did in the kitchen was purge all our old spices/herbs.

We're saving the garage til we actually pack up stuff from in there, but again, I think there's not much to discard.

We also painted the first coat of paint on a small table that I got from a garage sale that we plan on using on our front porch. I had the turquoise paint that was used for our Adirondack chairs matched....it's bright, but I just love the color. Dave likes it a lot too. I don't think it's an inside color for us for furniture, but it's great for outside.

We'll start packing next weekend (again, stuff that we'll be able to put into the garage). I suppose we could start now, but with no extra rooms in which to store packed boxes, we'd just be stuck with boxes cluttering our house for the next couple weeks.

We still don't know if this is going to go through or not. I think it will but not in as timely of a manner as we'd like.

It still all hinges on when the tenants are getting out.

After this experience I don't think I'd ever even LOOK at a house for sale that had tenants. We'd already be in our little Spanish Eclectic if it weren't for the tenants.

Best case hope is that we get to move the first weekend in November; hopefully worst case is moving the 10th of November (which would still allow us to do the Solvang metric century on the 11th, which, if you're a cyclist, you'd understand as being one of our priorities). The latter would actually allow us a little more time to move some of our stuff ourselves, but I'd really rather be in sooner rather than later.

We stopped by Antique Stove Heaven yesterday and ooh'd and aah'd over the refurbished stoves. I think we could actually get a 40" stove -- we'll have more than enough room on that wall where the stove sits. We're leaning towards Wedgewood or O'Keefe and Merritt, one of the 1950s stoves that look like '57 Chevies, kind of a Disney retro/Tomorrowland look. We have to determine if we're better off finding a cheap but still working and in decent if not pristine shape stove off of Craig's List or going the easier but more expensive route of getting an already refurbished stove from Antique Stove Heaven. (I've found a lot of prospective stoves on Craig's List in the $300-500 range; a few cheaper, a few more expensive.)